But poll respondents were likely lying about how many cookies they eat at once

Just as the National Household Survey results were released to provide a statistical snapshot of Canadian life, results of a potentially more relevant poll were made public on Wednesday: Cookie consumption.

These numbers was gathered to draw attention to the 25th anniversary of the President’s Choice Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookie produced by Loblaw — which was vindicated by the fact that 45 per cent of the country preferred chocolate chips to any other flavour.

The statistics also revealed some regional disparity between how these confections are consumed.

About a third of the residents of Alberta, B.C., Manitoba, Newfoundland, Ontario and P.E.I. eat a cookie a day based on numbers gathered by the firm Vision Critical.

The survey also revealed that Quebec had the greatest number of cookies consumed in each sitting. More than half the eaters in the province admitted to eating more than one at a time.

Most of the other respondents across the land were probably lying.

But cookie consumption was found to be lower in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. Just around one-quarter of the population in each of those three provinces eat a daily cookie.

All of these takeaways were made clear through a series of press releases, one for each Canadian province, designed to have the survey reported as actual news — the kind of practice that was far less common when the Decadent debuted in 1987.

Now, online surveys are able to deliver results such as the fact that 8 per cent of Saskatchewanians like eating cookies for breakfast, 30 per cent of New Brunswickers like to eat cookies at work and 18 per cent of Albertans like to eat their cookies in bed.

The avalanche of survey data buried a sobering mention of the fact that “almost half of Canadians eat less than one cookie a day.”

But there will always be enough people in this country willing to bite into an extra one on their behalf before they attempt to put the bag out of sight — if never really out of reach.